Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Due to the great work NOAA is doing locating
wreck sites in the Gulf of the Farallones Marine Sanctuary there has been a lot
of interest in the subject of local shipwrecks. The following is a list of
material available at the San Francisco Maritime Research Center on the subject
of shipwrecks along the California Coast along with some online resources. Also included is material on subjects related
to shipwrecks such as underwater archaeology and the Life-Saving Service. This is by no means an exhaustive list, rather
it is to give the researcher a taste of the collection. To do further research, please see our Keys catalog. To see anything on this list, please
contact Reference Librarian Gina Bardi: gina_bardi@nps.gov

Books on Shipwrecks

Overviews

Delgado, James P. Shipwrecks at the
Golden Gate: A History of Vessel Losses from Duxbury Reef
to Mussel Rock. Lagunitas, CA: Lexikos, 1989. Print.

While some of the books on overviews include stories, these titles are
more sensational and often include first person accounts. They are not
California specific rather they are international in scope.

Martingale,
Hawser. Wonderful Adventures on the Ocean: Being True Descriptions of
Battles, Tempests, Shipwreck, and Perilous Encounters: Also Lively Yarns and
Curious Stories Spun in the Forecastle over Hard Tack and Salt Junk, or in the
Dog Watches.
Boston: Cottrell. Print.

Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny,
Murder, and Piracy,
a Weird Series of Tales of Shipwreck and Disaster from the Earliest Part of the
Century to the Present Time, with Accounts of Providential Escapes and
Heartrending Fatalities.
New York: Hurst & Co. Pub, 18. Print.

---. Shipwreck Survey
of a Portion of Ocean Beach, Golden Gate National Recreation
Area, San Francisco, California to Locate the Remains of the United States
Revenue Cutter C.W. Lawrence. San Francisco: U.S. Dept. of the
Interior, National Park Service, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, 1984.
Print.

Fleming,
Robert M. A Primer of Shipwreck Research and Records for Skin Divers,
Including an Informal Bibliography Listing over 300 Sources of Shipwreck
Information.
Milwaukee, Wis: Global MFG. Corp, 1971. Print.

Skowronek,
Russell K., and Charles Robin Ewen, eds. X Marks the Spot: The Archaeology of Piracy. New Perspectives on Maritime
History and Nautical Archaeology.Gainesville, Fla: University Press of Florida,
2006. Print.

Life Saving Services

Bennett, Robert F. Sand Pounders: An
Interpretation of the History of the U.S. Life-Saving Service, Based on Its Annual
Reports for the Years 1870 through 1914. Washington, D.C: U.S. Coast Guard
Historian’s Office, U.S. Coast Guard Headquarters, 1998. Print.

Rogers, Henry J. Rogers’
Life-Saving Signal Book: Or Appendix to the American Code;
for the Use of Life-Boat Stations and Vessels in Distress, Also for Making
International Communications between Vessels of Different Nations, at Sea, or
off the Coast, during Periods of Calms, Light Winds, Storms, or Rough Weather. New ed.
Baltimore: New York: H. Rogers ; E. & G. W. Blunt, 1856. Print.

U.S. Life-Saving Service Heritage Association.
Life Line: Newsletter of
the U.S. Life-Saving Service Heritage Association. [Caledonia, MI:
U.S. Life-Saving Service Heritage Association. Print.

Photographs

Our Archival photographic collection
contains hundreds of images of shipwrecks.
Listed below are a few of the more notorious shipwrecked vessels in our
archives.

Aberdeen: Steam schooner, built 1899.
Wrecked June 23rd, 1916.

Atlantic: Bark, built 1851. Wrecked
December 16th, 1886.

Benevolence: Hospital ship, built
1944. Wrecked August 25, 1950.

City of Chester: Steamer, built 1888.
Wrecked August 22nd, 1888.

City of New York: Steamer, built 1875.
Wrecked October 26, 1893.

City of Rio de Janeiro: Steamer, built
1878. Wrecked February 22, 1901.

Frank H. Buck: Tanker, built 1914.
Wrecked March 6th, 1936.

The Ohioan: Freighter built 1914.
Wrecked October 7th, 1936.

Polaris: Four-masted schooner, built
1902. Wrecked January 16, 1914.

Reporter: Three-masted schooner,
built. Wrecked March 13th, 1902.

Historical Documents

HDC278

The John Lyman Papers

This collection includes a blueprint of a large format
map titled “Strandings and Wrecks of Vessels of the Coasts of California,
Oregon and Washington”. This highly detailed map includes vessel names, dates,
cause of wrecks and casualties.

HDC 559

San Francisco Marine
Exchange Records

The San Francisco Marine
Exchange collection {HDC 559} consists of [12] Ledgers, scrapbooks of marine
disasters, mishaps, and total losses.

Letter written by Mrs.
Proctor in 1901 when she was a nurse in the Army Hospital on the Presidio of
San Francisco. It describes her reaction to the wreck of the CITY OF RIO DE
JANERIO.

HDC 1099

Irwin T. McGuire letter

A survivor's account of
the collision and subsequent sinking of the hospital ship Benevolence under the
Golden Gate Bridge.

HDC 1276

Leo J. Wright historic
scrapbook

One scrapbook of newspaper
clipping, ca. 1900-1930. The articles are mainly , but not exclusively
concerned with disasters at sea, especially in the Pacific.

HDC 1310

Herbert Meyers scrapbooks

This collection consists
of 83 scrapbooks of clippings and photographs collected by seaman Herbert
Meyers. They document maritime disasters
on the Pacific Coast and worldwide from 1892 to 1973.

HDC 1393

South Coast, Brooklyn,
Nevada, Iowa shipwreck ledger

The South Coast, Brooklyn,
Nevada, Iowa shipwreck ledger collection consists of one ledger, titled “Record
of Lost Vessels and Departed Seamen,” 1930 to 1936.

Plans

We have many plans in our collection
of vessels that have wrecked. Looking at
plans of a vessel might help in the understanding of how and why the accident
occurred. We also have plans of support vessels such as coast guard cutters and
lifeboats.

This site is a
database with shipwreck listing all along the coast of California. It’s wide
but not very deep. You won’t find sensational accounts or much background
information, but latitude and longitude of wreck, when built, when wrecked,
captain and measurements of vessel.

You can read primary accounts of
shipwrecks and their aftermaths at this full text newspaper site. Search by vessel name and narrow your date
range to the wreck date. Sometimes wrecks were reported on for weeks, months or
years afterwards if there were lawsuits involved so be sure to search for at
least a few years after the actual wreck date.

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

A poet must master not only the ability to create images
with words but also to create a cadence and a rhyme that does not sound
sing-songy, forced, or contrived. A maritime poet must also master the language
of the sea and the sailor and knew the ways of those who sail the seas. During
the first half of the twentieth century, Cicely Fox Smith, mastered all of
those skills to become one of the most enduring, and yet unknown, maritime
poets Britain ever produced.

In 1899, her book of poetry called “Songs of Great Britain”
appeared in the British literary markets to favorable reviews. By 1904 she had published
her fourth volume of poetry earning herself a place in the book Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century.
The editor, Alfred H. Miles, had this to say about the young poet.

The
publication of four successive volumes of verse by a writer who has
not
attained to twenty-four years of age is surely phenomenal, and one

naturally looks
for signs of haste and immaturity in work produced so

early and with so
much rapidity. The work, however, if not perfect will

bear scrutiny, and
its examination only increases one’s wonder at both

the quantity and
the quality of the output.

Cicely (pronounced sigh-sli as in precisely) Fox Smith, born
1 February 1882 in Lymm, Cheshire, England, received her education at
Manchester High School for Girls and obtained her sense of adventure wandering
the moors near her childhood home.

Cicely chose travel to Africa as her dream, but in 1911 she
settled instead for a trip with her mother, Alice Wilson Smith, and her sister,
Margaret (Madge) Scott Smith, on a steamship bound for Canada where they
visited her older brother, Richard Andrew Smith. Eventually Cicely ended up in
the James Bay neighborhood of Victoria at the southern tip of Vancouver Island
in British Columbia. Here she worked as a typist from 1912-1913, first for the
BC Lands Department and then for an attorney on the waterfront.

Along the waterfronts of Victoria, Cicely Fox Smith found her
maritime voice. She roamed the wharves
and alleys during her spare time, talked with residents and sailors, listened
to their stories, and learned the ways of the sailor and the sea. She also
haunted the local lumber yards with their docks where sailing ships still
arrived in port to load lumber and then transport it around the world. The men
who sailed these vanishing vessels shared their stories and love of the sea
with her.

The knowledge she gained from these sea-going men permeates
the maritime themed poems and prose she wrote after her return to England late
in 1913, just before the outbreak of World War I. Publishing under the byline
of “C.F.S.” or “C. Fox Smith,” her poetry concerning ships, the sea, and the
sailors life lead many readers to believe that she was a sailor and, therefore,
a man, who had spent years working aboard sailing ships. Initially she
published her writings in numerous well-known magazines of her day, including Canada Monthly, The London Mercury, The
Nautical Magazine, The Spectator,
The Times Literary Supplement, The Daily Colonist (British Columbia), The Register (Australia), Nelson Evening Mail (New Zealand), and Punch. Later she republished most of
these poems in her volumes of poetry.

Cicely wrote more than just poetry. During her lifetime she
penned three romantic novels, numerous short stories and articles, as well as
several books describing “sailortown.” As a compiler, she published a volume of
traditional sea shanties she collected over the years and edited a collection
of sea poetry and prose written by author authors. During the latter years of
her life she wrote children’s sea stories with her sister, Madge, travel books,
history books, a book about ship models, at least one biography titled Grace Darling, contributed and edited
many collections, and contributed literary reviews to Punch magazine and the Times
Literary Supplement. Her brother, Phil Wilson Smith, well-known for his
etchings and oil paintings, illustrated many of her poetry and prose books.

In 1937 Cicely finally realized her life-long dream to visit
Africa when the Union-Castle Mail Steamship Company offered to sail her around
the continent’s coast, with stops in many of the harbors along the way, as
their guest. Her experiences during that memorable trip appeared in All the Way round: Sea Roads to Africa.

The Spectator hailed
Cicely works as “combining a mastery of sea-lingo with perfect command of sea
rhythms.” Other literary reviews of Cicely Fox Smith’s poetry and prose, which
appeared in her 1919 publication Songs
and Chanties, appear below.

“No one, not even Mr. Masefield, has written finer sea
ballads or come closer to the heart of those who go down to the great waters.”
-Spectator

“The writer’s vocabulary of sea phrases is striking and
characteristic; the technicalities proclaim a real sea lover, and the tone and
colour are only excelled by the lilt of the verses.” –Navy

“The sea songs have the breath and the sound and the motion
of the waters in them.” – Manchester City
News

“It is not likely that many lovers of sea-songs have missed
the voice of Miss Fox Smith, but if they do not know her ‘Songs in Sail’ let
them read ‘Sailor Town’ – the dancing colours and fresh scents of the harbor,
the rush of the sea and wind, the cheery pathos of the outward-bound, the
sailor’s homesickness – all this is carried on the rhythm of her verses with a
vividness hardly equaled by any other verse writer of the day.” – Times

“In her I verily believe the quintessence of the collective
soul of the latterday seamen has found its last resting-place, and a poignant
voice, before taking its flight forever from the earth.” – Joseph Conrad

Cicely Fox Smith crossed the bar on 8 April 1954 at the age
of 72, but her voice remains strong as her poetry and prose keep alive of the ways
of the sailor and his sailing ships long after they have departed from the
seas.

Thursday, March 26, 2015

I
am really excited to be going back to my old stomping grounds across the Bay
today to present a poster at the Science for Parks, Parks for Science: The Next Century. This
conference is being held at U.C. Berkeley from March 25-27. I am
presenting this poster at the Valley Life Science building on the
Cal Campus today Thursday March 26. I will be talking it up from 4 to 6 pm:

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

As any reader knows, despite our best intentions, books are occasionally damaged. Here in the Collections Dept., we do a lot of repairs on our collections materials, including repairs and stabilization of items upon receipt--a lot of items are in bad shape when they arrive, and we repair and stabilize them so they can be used for research by our users.

The books shelved in our main stacks are not only used by researchers in the Reading Room of the Research Center, but unlike our rare books, they also circulate to staff, and to researchers at other libraries via interlibrary loan. (Rare books never leave the Research Center, and the decision process for their preservation is entirely different--they are preserved as acquired and often placed in protective enclosures.) Sometimes we decide to simply replace a damaged stacks copy by purchasing one in better condition, but when we can't easily replace the copy, or repair is more efficient than replacement, we repair it.

One such item is our copy of the Romance of Piracy--the bottom of its spine was damaged. This typically happens when a book is dropped. This is a picture of the spine at the bottom of the book, showing the spine slightly detached from the front board (the front cover). The book is held spine up in a finishing press, ready for repair:

Using an adhesive that is a mixture of wheat starch and methyl cellulose in water, which is fully reversible in water (should we ever wish to reverse the repair), I used a small piece of hanji paper to repair the spine, placing part of the hanji paper under the rumpled and partially detached spine piece, and overlapping a bit onto the front cover:

Then a piece of wax paper is placed on the repair, with waste paper behind that to absorb moisture, and the book is wrapped in a bandage to apply pressure to the repair, so it dries as flat as possible. It's left like this overnight (and I'm always impatient in the morning to see how it came out!)

This is the dried repair, with the book back in the finishing press, so I can easily trim the hanji paper's little threads that hang below the bottom of the book:

The final step is coloring the hanji paper so that it blends with the rest of the book binding with some colored pencils--this is purely for aesthetic reasons. The finished repair:

And, most importantly, the book is now sound, and opens and closes again as it should, and is ready to be read again!

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